Ashley Smith enjoyed ligatures around neck, guard tells inquiry

Smith 2

On the day Ashley Smith was transferred from Nova Scotia to the Grand Valley Institute for Women in Kitchener, she initially refused to remove her clothing and don a gown for a strip search. At 4:35 pm, she was pepper-sprayed and eventually complied with the orders. Because she had been pepper-sprayed in the past, she had a tolerance to the spray, which caused several guards wearing gas masks to cough. (Still images taken from Correctional Services video)

TORONTO — Just over a month before she died, Ashley Smith told a prison guard at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener that she enjoyed the sensation of tying ligatures around her neck, and that her brother taught her how to do it, the teenager’s inquest heard Tuesday.

Guard Michelle Lombardo testified that Smith said she habitually tied the ligatures with the expectation the jail’s guards would save her.

The conversation happened around early September 2007 — Smith asphyxiated herself in her cell Oct. 19, 2007 while guards watched — and Lombardo told the inquest that Smith made the remarks while the two were having a casual conversation.

On Tuesday, the inquest jurors also watched a dramatic video of Smith’s return to the Kitchener prison on Aug. 31, 2007, from the Nova Institution, a correctional centre for women in Nova Scotia.

Wearing green track pants and a T-shirt, Smith is taken off the plane with a waist restraint and her hands and ankles cuffed. She is escorted by six guards dressed in tactical gear. She is transported on a secure truck to a segregation cell.

The video shows guard Charlene Byfield negotiating with Smith outside her closed cell door. Byfield asks Smith to take off her clothes so she can be strip searched.

Smith doesn’t comply.

Byfield gives Smith several polite warnings that the officers will be forced to enter her cell, use force, and employ a pepper spray-like substance if she doesn’t take her clothes off.

Eventually, the team enters the cell, the spray is used and Ashley is pinned face down on her bed.

Guards can be heard coughing on the video, but the spray seems to have no effect on Smith. The inquest heard that Smith had developed a tolerance to the spray because it had been used on her many times during her stay in the correctional system.

Smith later removed her clothes and the guard does a visual search through the window of her cell door.

Several days later in September, during a cavity search at a nearby hospital, two items were removed from Smith’s vagina, Lombardo testified. One was large enough to be tied around Smith’s midsection, and the other was a 40-centimetre ligature made of green cloth.

Lombardo testified that the green cloth was from the track suit Ashley was wearing when she got off the plane from Nova Scotia days earlier.

The inquest also heard Tuesday that about eight days before Smith’s death, a use of force expert with the Correctional Service of Canada’s regional office told guards at Grand Valley they were entering Smith’s cell too often to address the ligature tying.

Ken Allan told the guards their reports on these incidents were making Grand Valley’s warden look bad at national headquarters, Lombardo testified.

During the same meeting, Allan also told the guards that if Smith died as a result of her ligature tying, it would be deemed “death by misadventure” — in other words, the Grand Valley guards wouldn’t be blamed, Lombardo said.